


Last Summer

by fadedskylines



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, M/M, Peterick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1352329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadedskylines/pseuds/fadedskylines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Pete reaches his eighteenth birthday, Mikey is no longer blowing candles beside him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Phrases that are isolated and in quotations are from the poem "To J.K. Rowling, From Cho Chang" by Rachel Rostad. You can watch it on YouTube. Also, Pete is born and raised in Jamaica in this fic(fun fact of the day, Pete's maternal family is from Jamaica). Thanks for reading!

"Last summer, I met a boy.

He spoke like rain against windows, he had his father's blue eyes-

He pressed his wrist against mine and said he was too pale.

He said my skin was so much more beautiful to him-

I was pacific sunset, almond milk in a porcelain cup."

*

A late night under the stars of the beached sky, Jamming is blaring on Mikey's small stereo and he strums his guitar along to the song. He tells Pete that it reminds of him of the beach at night, the waves crashing into his skin and the seashells poking at his thighs. Pete laughs and says that that's what he says about every Bob Marley song.

Mikey rests his palm on the strings of his guitar and sighs.

"That's because every Bob Marley song reminds me of the beach."

It reminds him of Pete, too, but he omits that part-although Pete can hear the words ringing in the shell of his ear. He wants it to ring in Mikey's ears too; he wants Mikey to feel the words shake the sand and the incoming tides; he wants Mikey to watch their love float into the humid air and navigate its way to the Moon, crashing into all the stars on the way and leaving a giant crater right on the man on the Moon's face-

So he says it.

"Every song reminds me of you," Pete whispers. He nestles his nose into the crook of Mikey's neck and closes his eyes, relishing in the fragrance that boils in his collarbone, cologne and raindrops and mango smoothies-

He loves it.

He loves Mikey.

*

Patrick is sprawled out across Pete's bed, his pale skin melting red when Pete reaches out to touch his arm. He digs his shoulderblades into Pete's comforter, a quilted Jamaican flag. He watches Pete drag his fingertips up his arm, across his collarbone, and up to his chin. Every patch of his skin is flushed red when Pete lets go, pulling his arm back to his side.

"You're red." Pete says.

Patrick laughs and sits up, wiping his sweaty hands on his jeans. "Yeah, well." He can't finish his sentence.

Pete raises his hands to his lips, his thumb caught in the corner of his mouth. "So, bass guitar."

Patrick's eyebrows shoot into his hairline and he reaches across the bed, grabbing Pete's red bass and tucking it under his armpit. "Yeah, uh, where did we leave off?"

Pete scoots the sheetmusic closer to Patrick and laughs. His tan hands contrast with the page and Patrick has the sudden urge to hold his hand. "Measure twenty."

"Right." Patrick clears his throat and begins to rearrange his fingers on the bass, with Pete's help of course.

"You're doing good." Pete whispers, his sunkissed fingers wrapping around Patrick's pale wrists.

*

Pete rolls onto his side, facing Mikey. He smiles and touches his arm, grasping Mikey's pale skin.

Mikey releases the silence with a startle in his throat and taps the end of his bass. "Are you going to learn this or not?"

Pete giggles and grabs the guitar, his toes perched beneath Mikey's blanket. "Measure twenty, right?"

Mikey shakes his head and jets his index finger further down the page. "Measure twenty five."

Pete watches Mikey take his tan fingers into his slender palm, his white thumb rubbing circles into Pete's knuckles. It's like he'd given up on teaching Pete bass, all too focused with the cracks in Pete's fists.

"Are we taking a break?" Pete asks.

Mikey nods and, reluctantly, leans in to kiss Pete. When they break away, Mikey examines Pete's hands.

"You're Pacific sunset, Pete." He kisses him again. "You're beautiful."

*

When Pete finally declares a break, Patrick follows him into the kitchen for snacks. Pete's apartment is small but, then again, he'd told Patrick that he just doesn't have the money to afford anything bigger. Patrick wishes that Pete has the money; his lips drip down at the corners when Patrick brings up the rusty lock in his front door, or the creak in the stairwell that leads to his apartment.

"Who taught you how to play bass that well?" Patrick asks, catching a Coke that Pete throws at his head.

Pete pauses and takes several moments to open his can of soda. "An old friend of mine."

Pete always speaks in small, accented sentences and it makes Patrick feel like's talking too much.

"Do you still talk with him?" Patrick prods. "Maybe he can teach me something on the bass, too."

Something flares in Pete's dark brown eyes that makes Patrick's stomach turn.

"No, I don't talk to him anymore." Pete mumbles.

"Okay then, let's talk about something else. Did you visit Jamaica recently?" Patrick steers the conversation away from Pete's 'old friend.'

Pete laughs. "You see me more than once a week. You'd know if I went anywhere recently."

"Well, when was the last time you visited Jamaica, then?" Patrick takes a sip of his soda.

Pete's eyes fog up and he looks up towards the popcorn colored ceiling. "Three years ago. Maybe even four. I went for my grandma's funeral-she died on my parents' anniversary. It was tragic, really, but I got to see my family for the first time in..."

He trails off and finds himself searching for the end of his sentence in Patrick's eyes.

"Five years." Pete coughs. "It felt like a century."

*

"You know we can leave Jamaica, right?" Mikey suggests in the dark of night. His jeans are stained wet with the constant tides, but it doesn't seem to bother him at all.

"You say 'we' like we've both been here our whole lives." Pete sighs. "You're a tourist. I've lived here for my entire life-sixteen years, Mikey! I've seen this country rise and fall and grow towards something I want to be here for." He pauses. "A future."

Mikey runs his index finger across the surface of a sand dollar. "There's a future in America, too."

Pete ignores him and splashes his hands in the water.

"I'm leaving in five days." Mikey says.

Pete springs off his knees and nearly collapses into Mikey's lap. "You couldn't have told me earlier?"

Mikey watches the tears form in Pete's eyes. "I didn't know when would be a good time to-"

"No!" Pete shouts, teardrops spilling down his cheeks. "You can't leave me for another year, Mikey, I can't keep waiting through the entire school year for you to return-I can't survive on phone calls or cute text messages, I can't!"

"Then come with me." Mikey says. "I want you to see America. I want you to see it with me."

*  
"Was your past in Jamaica so traumatic you can't tell me about it?" Patrick asks.

"It wasn't my past in Jamaica." Pete spits back at him. "It was what happened when I first got here."

Patrick can tell by the look in Pete's eyes that the conversation is over. He takes a long gulp of his soda and slouches in his seat.

*

"When he left me, I told myself I should have seen it coming.

I wasn't sure I was sad, but I cried anyways-"

*

When Pete reaches his eighteenth birthday, Mikey is no longer blowing candles beside him.

*

Pete realizes that the Winters in Chicago are harsh. Snow is constantly blown in his warm face when he steps outside of his school-he's a junior now. His mother sends him letters and boiling phone calls, but he never answers them. Mikey begs him to reply, he tells him that his mother thinks he's some cradle-robbing monster-

And he kind of is, Pete jokes.

Mikey doesn't laugh.

After a year in Chicago, Pete understands how hard Mikey's been working to support the both of them. He's seventeen, already old enough to get a job, so he applies to a McDonalds sitting a mile away from Mikey's house(which is his house).

His boss rapes him when he asks for a raise a month after he starts working there.

He rushes home to tell Mikey, tossing out every detail without a second thought.

Mikey pulls Pete into his car and drives to McDonalds, running inside and demanding to see the manager. When Pete nods, muttering that the man before them is indeed his boss, Mikey hurls himself at him. He throws every punch and kick that he possibly can until the employees are informed of what happened and join in as well. A cop car pulls up and Pete drags Mikey out of there before he's arrested.

Pete tells the officers about the rape and, within a minute, he watches his boss walk away in shackles, covered in bruises.

Mikey kisses him hard when they get home and Pete snakes a tan hand up his shirt, leaning close to whisper in Mikey's ear:

"I'm yours. Don't forget that."

Mikey laughs. "I'll never forget that." He reaches down to grab Pete's other hand. He stares at it for a long time, rolling his fingers in his hand. "I'm too pale."

"If anything, I'm too dark." Pete says it as lightheartedly as he can, trying to convince himself that he doesn't really believe it.

Mikey's eyes dialate and he presses his lips against Pete's again, reuniting their mouths. He pulls away and chastely kisses Pete's cheek. "You're not too dark."

He kisses the corner of Pete's mouth. "You're beautiful."

Pete briefly wonders why he can't be both.

*

The break is over after a mere ten minutes, most of which is spent downing soda in silence. Pete kisses Patrick hard and slow, running his slender fingers up his arm. They drag each other into Pete's bedroom and pull at each other's clothes, tugging belts out of their loops and zippers down their chains.

Before Pete goes down on Patrick, he watches his face turn cherry red.

He thinks of Mikey's words, for one second, and smiles.

Patrick _is_ too pale, he thinks.

And he's beautiful.

*

Mikey begins to limit Pete's interaction with the outside world shortly after the McDonalds incident. He's only allowed to go to school, and nowhere else. Mikey brings food home-never McDonalds, of course-and clothes and everything Pete needs, but it's not enough.

Eventually, Mikey starts driving Pete to school, keeping a heavy eye on him as he walks into the building.

Pete starts to think of school as a safe haven.

Mikey says that Pete's like his acoustic guitar. He's tan and has a nice sound, but he needs to be kept in a particular environment to ensure that he reaches his full potential.

Pete says that Mikey's treating him like an object and that he always has been.

He's always been a "pacific sunset" or "almond milk-"

And now he's Mikey's guitar.

After six months, only three weeks short of Pete's birthday, Pete breaks up with Mikey.

"You're too controlling," Pete cries. "You're becoming less of my boyfriend and more of my parent! Isn't this why you took me out of Jamaica? You wanted me to live the American dream, complete with my own freedoms-but how can I do that when you're holding me in this little box?"

After a long moment of silence, Pete speaks up again.

"This is worse than Jamaica."

That's when Mikey stands up and marches straight into his room. He starts packing his things into numerous suitcases and hauls them into his car. He kisses Pete one last time and leaves him with a quiet "goodbye" the next morning.

Pete is alone.

*

"Girls who look like me are supposed to cry over boys who look like him

I've seen all the movies

And read all the books-"

*

Mikey returns, two months later, with a pale boy in his arms. He looks to be around Pete's age and Mikey says that his name is Ryan.

Mikey also says that he left some things behind.

When Mikey searches through what used to be his room, Pete can't help but compare himself to Ryan. He's so pale, white as snow; so much so that Pete can see the veins in his wrists. Suddenly, his dark skin feels too big for him. He wants to peel it off and slip into Ryan's.

He wants to glance at the green veins in his wrists and see Mikey's eyes in it.

Mikey finally steps out of "his" room and waves a pale hand at Pete.

Pete can remember when that hand was entertwined with his, powdered sugar laced around a thick pile of caramel. He misses the red bass Mikey gave him for his seventeenth birthday. He can still hear Jamming playing faintly in the corner of his mind-

He can still hear the words that rang in the shell of Mikey's ear, shook the sand and the waves, and blasted a crater into the side of the moon.

"Every song reminds me of you." Pete whispers. Mikey spins around on his heel and nods. He doesn't say anything, and really, the nod means nothing.

It's the last time Pete sees him.

*

"We were just following the plot."

*

Pete pulls out of Patrick, his tan hands tightening around Patrick's sides. He pulls him to his side and holds him close, resting his chin on Patrick's strawberry blonde hair. He can feel Patrick's breath carving into his collarbone; he can feel every inch of Patrick's skin underneath his hands-

He tells Patrick that he's too dark, that when he holds his hand all he can think about is how dark he is shoulder-to-shoulder with him. His voice is trembling and his fingers are shaking, slowly pulling away from Patrick's hipbones.

And Patrick pulls himself up to face Pete and smiles.

"You are." He brings his hand up to Pete's cheek. "And you're beautiful."

*

Patrick wants to stay like this forever; he wants to kiss Pete until his lips are swollen and numb, lay with him underneath a Jamaican flag and hold his hand. He can feel Pete's breath against the back of his neck, and he knows he's not asleep. He rolls onto his other side and tucks his head beneath Pete's chin, breathing in the cologne Pete sprayed over his neck.

Meanwhile, Pete just stares out his window, watching the full moon drown the grass with its shine.

The moon looks the same as it always has, not a single crater in sight.


End file.
